Implemented Suggestion: Bring back POTM / TOTM / Best single plant shot /Best FTS/ all of them!

[Koan]

Clicking through the pics on the rotating pictures banner, it appears that many of them come from contests Best this / That / The other from 2022 and 2023.

Bring back the contests! Bring back the incentive for folks to take and post more pictures, motivate our lurkers to join up and show us what they have!

We can even just rerun all the contests from those years to start

 

[Art]

So these are always fun and I enjoy putting them together but they are work.

Tank of the Month - This is a common feature with other, particularly saltwater, forums. They usually have a dedicated team that scours the forum to find a beautiful tank and reach out to the owner to see if they are willing to be TOTM. If the answer is yes, they send a series of questions and request a lot of photos of the tank.

If the owner completes the questionnaire and send the photos, then one of the team members is charged with formatting them into a post that is readable and in a standard format. Then it gets posted by the deadline. And, the quest for next month's TOTM begins again.

As you can see, this requires a dedicated team of members, a substantial base of potential TOTM candidates and the willingness of the owner to participate and submit photos. All doable but it is a lot of work.

I think we can only do this if we have a committed member that is willing to take it on and the pool of prospective owners would need to be more than just ScapeCrunch.

Photo of the Month - This is also a common feature and easier to implement. Usually, every month there is a different theme.

The difficult part is the backend system that allows for voting within a timeframe and then chooses the highest vote getter as the winner. The available add-ons for this are not great.

If someone is willing to come up with the monthly theme, I will work on solving the voting system. Please let me know.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Bring back the contests! Bring back the incentive for folks to take and post more pictures, motivate our lurkers to join up and show us what they have!

@Art Did this a few times and even had giveaways. What I didn’t like, was “members” who had a handful of posts or less chimed in for something free and have had zero influence on the forum since. Not the end of the world, just a personal gripe.

I too would like to see the lurkers join and show us what they have or need help with

 

[Koan]

this requires a dedicated team of members,

My bad, I had assumed it was an opportunity for people to put their own pictures up to be voted on, or for people to nominate pics, and have them voted on over a period of time, not that it was an archivist task.

Is it harder to do it that way?

 

[Art]

The TOTM is a lot of work but the POTM isn't. If we are talking about POTM, I just need a volunteer who will come up with the monthly theme. I will work on the voting system.

 

[Burr740]

I liked tank of the month and single plant pic. Seems like those wouldnt be much trouble? Make a thread, post pics, and whatever gets the most likes.
Then keep a gallery of all the winners people could scroll through like Koan was talking about. To me I dont think it should matter if it gets a lot of one post entries. What does the winner get anyway, featured in the gallery, cute little badge if they want it? Idk just asking. It still good content for the site imo

 

[Art]

Just to clarify the Tank of the Month.

We can certainly have the theme "tank of the month" as part of our media of the month contest. This is easy and I'm working on a voting system now using our Gallery add-on.

A Tank of the Month feature is much more work as we need to find someone that a) has a great tank, b) is willing to participate by providing a detailed write up and photos, and c) doing it every month. This is what I feel is difficult at the moment without someone willing to invest quite a few hours a month.